The final event of Destination Parks will take place on September 11, 2019 in Bern Switzerland.

The results of the projects will be presented along with some outstanding good practice examples, before exploring further ways to move ahead on the development of a common alpine strategy on the future development and promotion of sustainable toursim in protected areas.

European Parks Academy will be organizing 3 seminars from July 15th- 21st

Seminar A World Heritage Sites and Sustainable Tourism: Tourism presents itself as both an opportunity and a challenge for protected areas and World Heritage Sites. This seminar will focus on touristic regulations and recommendations of the World Heritage Convention along with practical tools to for sustainable management of tourism flows.

Seminar BEcological Monitoring and innovative technologies: This seminar will include training for the latest technological innovations in wildlife and vegetation monitoring such as smartphone apps and remote-sensing based change detection.

Seminar CTransboundary Protected Areas and Successful: Learning how to find common approaches and meet the challenges of intercultural communication along with existing cooperation models and their benefits.

How to rethink tourism as a holistic offer based on local resources? Which strategies combine tourism, agriculture, crafts, education and culture? How to involve guests, locals and temporary residents in a common vision for the destination? The community network "Alliance in the Alps" and CIPRA International will address these questions at the Annual Conference on 25 and 26 May 2017 in Bled, Slovenia.

One of the central challenges for developing relevant options for long-term sustainble tourism will involve the young generation and their visions about the future of a liveable alpine space. In a workshop on the YOUrALPS Alpine School Model, ALPARC and the University of Ljubljana will try to involve youth in the search for suitable approaches. Thus, light will be shed on the several options of reconciliating nature and ecosystem services as source of economic income and their function as a sound environment for preserving natural and cultural heritage.

In June 2017 a core group of hikers departed from Vienna and have been travelling through several destinations all over the Alps on a journey of 120 days that will lead them to Nice at the end of September.

Whatsalp is the continuation of TransALPedes, a journalistic-political project launched in 1992. Back then, a core group of eight specialists and media workers, accompanied by a group of interested parties, crossed the Alpine region in four months. Thanks to more than 100 encounters TransALPedes built up an international network of 800 people with committed individuals, groups and authorities engaged in the protection and long-term development of the Alpine region.

In 2017, all along the hike the core group has already had the opportunity to set up numerous site meetings with interested individuals, groups and institutions, shedding light on and discussing the changes in the landscapes and societies across the Alps that have taken place over time. The group has also been in touch and had some exchanges with the youngsters of the “Whatsalp Youth” project led by CIPRA. As the Whatsalp hike has largely followed the route that the TransALPedes Group walked 25 years ago, all the meetings have been a great opportunity to make relevant comparisons and reflect over the traces left by humans and natural events in the past as well as to draw attention to future perspectives.

Whatsalp hike has been reported through short texts, films and photos on a blog where the group has been communicating on a daily basis about what they have seen, heard and experienced.For further information about the roadmap of previous and future meetings, the route of the hike or to register for the last stages and join the core group, please visit the website of the project.

In the frame of the WeWild project, ALPARC aims at developing a joint Alps-wide communication strategy and several joint communication tools that will help reduce the impact of snow sports on wildlife in the Alps. ALPARC wants to gather protected areas as well as other key players and interested partners in the Alps behind this joint initiative.Over the summer months, the ALPARC operational unit has intensively worked with external communication experts and the project’s steering committee on the content of the communication strategy and on the concepts of the communication tools: logo, video-clip and website. The video clip will be made by a Chamonix-based studio specialized in skiing and outdoor images and we hope that by underlining these elements, it will speak to a maximum number of recreationists. It will be released in December, when the logo and the website will also be launched. The website will deliver essential information and awareness raising messages for outdoor participants and besides that, will provide a space that presents the initiative, its partnerships and how to join it.The two upcoming months will give the opportunity to exchange on these developments with the ALPARC network. A first meeting for French parks and reserves will take place in Bourg-d’Oisans on September 21st 2017: wildlife disturbance and environmental impacts of outdoor activities are burning issues in France and many protected areas are looking for ways to raise awareness and change the behaviours of their visitors, also in a joint way. Then on October 19th and 20th, a second international WeWild workshop in Aree protette dell’Ossola in northern Italy will take place (after the first one in Vorarlberg in March 2017). The main objectives of this second workshop will be to gather feedback on the communication strategy and its tools, to discuss their joint circulation in winter 2017/2018 and how to develop further the WeWild partnership. Registration is already open:

For the workshop in France, register here. For the international workshop in Ossola, register here.ALPARC is looking forward to seeing you at one of these upcoming events.

A big thank you to Maša Klemenčič who has supported ALPARC and in particular this project as a project assistant over the last six months and who left the ALPARC operational unit in Chambéry in the beginning of September. ALPARC wishes her all the best for the future.For more details on the project, please contact dominik.cremer-schulte@alparc.org.

The WeWild project is financed by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN, Germany) with funds of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB, Germany).

Further readingTogether with researchers from the Savoy-Mont Blanc University and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, the ALPARC team recently published an article on this topic in the journal eco.mont, resuming the results of the 2016 international workshop that was held in France. The article is accessible online at this link.

The Alpine Day of Tourism and Mobility is a two-day conference focusing on innovative and sustainable mobility in touristic regions.

The conference will take place on 18th-19th October 2017 in Werfenweng, Austria.

The participants will have the chance to experience soft mobility solutions in Werfenweng and to attend panel discussions concerning the future of touristic mobility as well as concrete projects implemented in six Alpine countries.

In the French Alps, a new project is underway to bring mountains closer to the people. The mountain refuge of Lac du Pavé in the Oisans massif, which is a part of the Ecrins National Park, is going to be renovated, but instead of building it directly in the mountains away from the eyes of the public, the French federation of Alpine clubs, National syndicate of refuge keepers and the local community have chosen a more original approach: they will first build it in the city centre of Grenoble, before moving it to its permanent position at the Lac du Pavé in the Ecrins.

The refuge is scheduled to be installed in Grenoble in the spring of 2019 for a period of two to three months, and it will offer its visitors the complete experience of spending a night amongst the peaks. In addition, conferences and events touching various aspects of mountains and mountaineering will be organised. The project, coordinated by the Syndicat des gardiens de refuge and Coordination montagne, will kick off at the end of June. Different stakeholders from the fields of mountaineering and tourism are welcome to participate.

The International Conference that took place on the 16th-18th of May in Sölk, Sölktäler Nature Park (Styria, Austria) on "The Wolf in the alpine cultural landscape – chances and challenges" has gathered about 100 of participants. There has been some interesting debate and the subject was actively discussed in the presence of Marianne Elmi, Deputy Secretary General of the Alpine Convention.